Fair Game
GOODMAN, WALTER
Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Confession of an Extreme Partisan All right, I surrender. Take me to your Vice President. I did it. It was ideology through and through. I am the handful of extreme...
...How would it look for Me to sign a petition demanding impeachment...
...It makes no sense...
...Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist...
...Now lay off already...
...Yes, I was the one who negotiated with the milkmen...
...With Dr...
...If Harold Hughes decides to stop drinking, that's okay—but does he have to make a universal case of it...
...He was ready to let them turn slowly in the wind, as the saying goes...
...That Billy Graham has made a whole career out of yelling at people to do my bidding, and I don't remember ever meeting him...
...When I listened to the tapes, however, I discovered there wasn't an incriminating word on them...
...Well, I'm sorry to say that once again the President of the United States hasn't put his finger on the problem...
...And when My Son comes to Me after hearing that I'm The One Who kept John Stennis alive so he could return to the U.S...
...Only it had nothing to do with Ellsberg...
...If that wasn't enough, John Stennis had to get up and tell all those devout, well-to-do, powerful people there in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton that "a high hand" entered his case and saved him from succumbing to his bullet wounds last year...
...I'd like it understood before anybody starts bringing charges that I'm a lot less close to Billy Graham than Richard Nixon was to Egil Krogh...
...Not to mention the persuading it required to get him to have the General Services Administration decorate his houses and environs for Pat and the kids and Bebe...
...Ah, how Bebe resisted, but soon the potion I had slipped into his rum Collins took over...
...I put the ITT money into unmarked envelopes so Maury Stans was not able to return it, though heaven knows he tried...
...And I'm the one who's hoarding toilet paper and bidding up the price of meat...
...There was a picture included in the summary of this Nixon laughing and waving and that loudmouth Billy Graham pulling on his shirt cuff...
...How was I supposed to know American voters get nervous about politicians who cry...
...It was me in the orange wig...
...I'll start from the beginning...
...Incidentally, it was also I who put the Arabs up to holding back their oil...
...So what I did was deep-six a batch of the most unincriminating transcripts in the Potomac River, and I kept Rose Mary Woods stretched out by her telephone for 90 minutes while that crazy tape went back and forth, back and forth...
...Secret Service would do such a sloppy job...
...Billy and Senator Harold hollering all over the place, you probably couldn't hear Me if I decided to say something...
...But Christian Scientists won't even take aspirin...
...I cried out to God, and from that moment my life was changed...
...What irks Me is having these politicians get together at their prayer breakfasts and tell each other what it is I want from them, as if I called up last night with the news...
...But I went behind John's back and fed peyote to Dita Beard...
...Does he think he's Me...
...What irks Me is not so much having people tell Me what they want...
...It was I, not the Secret Service, who installed the equipment...
...My plan was to get caught and have Richard Nixon impeached...
...Nixon was as clean as Checkers' tooth...
...They're starving by the thousands in Bangladesh, and I'm supposed to be brooding over a potted Populist...
...And, oh, the trouble I had persuading the President to take a $500,000 credit for his papers and push the date of the contribution back a little, and not pay his California taxes...
...Yes, I put Chapin up to putting Segretti up to putting those other collegians up to doing their tricks-but it was in behalf of the radical-lib party, not the Committee to Reelect the President...
...What I have to say is: if you don't stop dragging me and your devout quaker grandmother, may she rest in peace, and abe lincoln into your grubby little problems, i'm going to have to smite you...
...He was half asleep, still murmuring, "No, don't, please don't," when I stuffed the bills down his shirt front...
...The last time I subpoenaed one of those people, the post office lost the letter...
...2,500 well-to-do Joans of Arc...
...Sure it was me—who else would it be...
...The President of the United States, speaking at something called the 22nd annual National Prayer Breakfast, held in the Washington Hilton hotel and attended by 2,500 invited important people, was quoted as saying: "Too often we are a little too arrogant...
...I did give it some thought, but I didn't come up with very much...
...But to get back to the main point...
...I confess...
...that was an unfortunate coincidence...
...What kind of a lesson is that for a Young Man...
...Do you thing exorcism might work...
...You think the U.S...
...Just like Senator Hugh Scott said...
...John Mitchell wanted desperately to prosecute the antitrust case and send those big shots to jail...
...Who ever thought they'd catch up with me...
...Leave Me out of it, Graham...
...one year of watergate is enough...
...All those fellows were writing books proving he's nuts, and I wanted to get hold of the raw data so I could leak it to Jack Anderson...
...It was about as hard as persuading Spiro Agnew to take money...
...What are the widows and orphans of Bangladesh supposed to make of that...
...It's as far-fetched as having your own brother tailed by plainclothes-men...
...You want to know about the tapes Well, I was the one who ordered that the whole White House be bugged...
...here in My chosen vehicle, The New Leader, is this—are you listening, Mr...
...Nixon fought like hell until I pointed out to him that not decorating the place would be the easy thing to do...
...What all of us need to do, and what this nation needs to do, is to pray in silence and listen to God to find out what He wants us to do...
...As for this Watergate business...
...that can be entertaining...
...Why would a man eavesdrop on himself...
...It makes Me uneasy to think of all you people out there taking your President's advice and sitting around or, worse still, on your knees like Harold Hughes, listening for Me to tell you what I want you to do...
...That's right, I was the one who fixed up the ITT deal...
...He thought the cash was earmarked for a deductible dairy farm at San Clemente where poor Indian children could come and be with cows for 10 days every summer...
...Still, One doesn't like to be marked down as a fence-straddling moderate liberal, so I suppose I have to say something in response to the public solicitation of the President of the United States at his big prayer breakfast...
...It was I, pretending to be a bagman from Howard Hughes, who gave that $100,000 to Bebe...
...what am I supposed to answer...
...And you've seen the luck I have with Quakers...
...I was rifling lots of psychiatrists' files at the time to see what they had on the President...
...A Jew goes quick to his psychoanalyst...
...Confession of a Moderate Liberal I was sitting up here the other day worrying over the birth rate in Bangladesh, when one of the angels who hang around handed Me My daily news summary...
...Also, I don't want to appear partisan...
...It was all John Dean's fault...
...I am the handful of extreme partisans who wish to revoke the people's mandate of 1972...
...I thought when I wrote the letter about Henry Jackson and Hubert Humphrey being queer that I was cornering the Gay Lib vote...
...Could it be he has an identity crisis...
...Whatever the man's up to, it's his own operation...
...One year of Watergate is enough...
...I told Haldeman that I was Ehrlich-man, and Ehrlichman that I was Colson, and Colson that I was Liddy, and Liddy that I was Hunt, and Hunt that I was Liddy, and Liddy that I was Colson, and Colson that I was Ehrlichman, and Ehrlichman that I was Haldemarl, and then, disguising myself as a band of Cuban Freedom Fighters, I broke into the Democratic headquarters...
...But 1 was determined to get the goods on our President...
...I inveigled the President into meeting with them by telling him it was a 4-H conference...
...I was trying to do Edmund Muskie a favor when I made him cry...
...Leave it to Gerald Ford...
...If a Catholic gets caught, he can go to confession...
...We try to talk and tell Him what we want...
...Well, what I have to say...
...Listen to what he told those 2,500 important breakfasters at the 22nd annual National Prayer Breakfast while they were still trying to digest their coffee: "I was beaten to my knees in despair...
...It could be a long wait...
...Senate, and says to Me, "Father, do You know what You do...
...I planned the Soviet wheat deal, too...
...You think those fellows are clucks...
Vol. 57 • March 1974 • No. 5
